To our Santiam colleagues, thank you. You have welcomed new partners into your departments, shared your experience and expertise, raised opportunities, helped develop solutions, and remained focused on your patients throughout a period of significant change. Your commitment to engage, lean in and champion this work is shaping our progress and strengthening our health system.

We began by bringing colleagues together through events at the Santiam, West Valley and Salem campuses. These gatherings created opportunities to build relationships, learn from one another and celebrate the future.

That spirit of partnership is reflected in how the integration work is structured. Each work area is paired with both a Santiam and Salem Health lead, creating opportunities for thought-partnership and shared visibility while establishing a foundation for collaboration. One example of collaboration is the work underway in Surgical Services. Through a joint Rapid Improvement Event, a focused effort that brings the people closest to the work together to identify opportunities and implement solutions, team members are aligning practices that support surgical safety. This includes the universal protocol and operating room safety checklist, surgical counts and time-outs, sterile processing standards, and instrument-set inventory. They have also identified opportunities involving endoscopy cabinets and operating room booms and are developing solutions together.

Integration work is also advancing across Finance, Information Systems, Provider Credentialing, Risk Management, Contracting and the Foundation, with teams coordinating through daily report-outs and regular leadership updates. While each area is making important progress, our Finance teams have reached several notable milestones. Santiam’s long-term debt has been paid off, and colleagues have completed training sessions on financial policies, practices and reporting tools. They have completed the crosswalk between Infor and Premier, our two financial systems, and successfully generated consolidated reports. Together, these accomplishments bring us closer to completing our first consolidated month-end close, an important step toward operating as one health system.

Teams have also completed important hospital and pharmacy licensing activities, including Joint Commission notification, radiation protection requirements and DEA registration updates. 

Teams are also making progress in these areas:

Throughout this journey, please continue to share what is working and where we can do better. Bring forward ideas, questions, and concerns. The people closest to the work often see opportunities first, and every voice is important as we build solutions that are practical, sustainable and responsive to the needs of our teams and communities.  

Becoming one health system is about more than aligning technology, policies and processes. It is about bringing talented people together around a shared purpose and learning from the strengths each team contributes. I am grateful for the professionalism, adaptability and commitment you demonstrate each day, and I am proud of what we are accomplishing together while continuing to deliver excellent patient care.

Thank you for your continued partnership, for supporting one another, and for the care you provide to our communities.